The Emergence of Loving Pedagogy in the L2 Affective Domain:How Affective Pedagogy Accounts for Chinese EFL Teachers’Professional Success and Job Satisfaction?

The success of teachers in professional environments has a desirable influence on their mental condition.Simply said,teachers’professional success plays a crucial role in improving their mental health.Due to the invaluable role of professional success in teachers’mental health,personal and professional variables helping teachers succeed in their profession need to be uncovered.While the role of teachers’personal qualities has been well researched,the function of professional variables has remained unknown.To address the existing gap,the current investigation measured the role of two professional variables,namely job satisfaction and loving pedagogy,in Chinese EFL teachers’professional success.To do this,three validated scales were provided to 1591 Chinese EFL teachers.Participants’answers to the questionnaires were analyzed using the Spearman correlation test and structural equation modeling.The data analysis demonstrated a strong,positive link between the variables.Moreover,loving pedagogy was found to be the positive,strong predictor of Chinese EFL teachers’job satisfaction and professional success.The findings of the current inquiry may help educational administrators enhance their instructors’professional success,which in turn promotes their mental and psychological conditions at work.

Macao Secondary School EFL Teachers' Perspectives on Written Corrective Feedback: Rationales and Constraints

Corrective feedback on writing(WCF)has been one of the most controversial topics in ESL/EFL teaching.In the past decades,much has been disputed regarding the effectiveness and preferences of the quantity,focus,directness and source of WCF.With so much uncertainty,the researcher set out to investigate how research-informed secondary school teachers in Macao reported their beliefs,rationales,practices and constraints of administering corrective feedback for EFL writing in Macao secondary schools.Twelve secondary school teachers were recruited at a TESOL conference to conduct focus-group discussions.Similar to previous findings,results suggest teachers had clear rationales as to their ways of practising WCF.However,many expressed difficulties in acting according to rationales and beliefs.Despite their experience and knowledge,practical constraints such as school policies and teacher workload made it unlikely for them to follow their thoughts with feedback on writing.This study identified six sources of constraints that could prohibit practices and potentially reshape ones’beliefs,which sheds light on future directions of WCF research.

A Small Scale Retrospective Study on Chinese EFL Teachers'Experienc-es in the Practicum

The goal of this small scale retrospective study is to examine the perceptions of Chinese EFL(English as a foreign language) teacher trainees of what they do and what they develop in the practicum. Research questions guiding this research are:(1)How much relative attention do Chinese teachers attribute to teaching EFL areas in the practicum in retrospect?(2) What activities do Chinese EFL teachers recollect doing in the practicum? and(3) What are the areas which they are aware of having developed in during the practicum? A questionnaire targeting EFL areas and general activities is employed to collect data; items contain 5-point Likert scales and three open-ended questions. Forty-eight respondents(44 female) are included in the sample. In the teaching of EFL areas, the results indicate that the participants experienced more emphasis on exam-oriented areas. The means for practicum activities show that participants highlighted learning by observation, discussion, and journals, among their various recalled activities. When evaluating development and learning opportunity in the practicum, participants reported improvements in general pedagogical knowledge, but they missed out on other aspects of teacher knowledge. The findings bring about evidence in what is effective and what is not of the practicum. It gives guidance to what could be changed for the practicum.

A Research on Different Classroom Questioning Strategies Between Chinese and Foreign EFL Teachers

The application of questioning as a teaching tool has always been considered as a main part of the teaching process.Based on the viewpoint of several researchers,a survey was conducted on the application of different questioning strategies by Chinese and foreign EFL teachers in a middle school,in order to determine their effects on students’language learning output and propose measures to optimize Chinese teachers’questioning strategies for improving students’learning efficiency.This research provides preliminary results based on the data collected from the video recordings of class sessions,a questionnaire,and an interview.According to the analysis,the questioning strategies differ between Chinese and foreign EFL teachers in many aspects,such as in information seeking,offering,modification,adjustment,feedback,and so forth.

On Competences Required for EFL Teachers in Secondary School

With the implementation of English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School,core competence,a vital construct in deepening curriculum reforms,has been brought into the spotlight,which attaches importance to cultivating students’key competences so as to realize the value of people cultivation.In another angle,the continuous intensification of education reform poses more demands on the faculty.What competences required for EFL teachers worth taking into consideration seriously.The paper elaborates required competences for EFL teachers hoping to offer pragmatic suggestions for EFL teachers in the perspective of professional development.

INNOVATION IN TEACHING ADVANCED WRITING TO EFL TEACHERS

1.IntroductionWriting is a productive skill of the language,which usually comes at the end of the four languageskills.Many learners find it difficult when they writeeither because they don’t have anything to writeabout or because they don’t know how to write.As aresult,they are daunted by any writing tasks.Teach-ers also find it difficult when they teach the writingcourse either because there aren’t enough teaching re-sources to go to or because the sheer marking of thecomposition poses as a monster of some sort.Theseproblems have hindered the effective teaching andlearning of writing.

FROM WRITING TO CHATTING: PROMOTING REFLECTIVE PRATICE AMONGST INSERVICE ESL/EFL TEACHERS

It has been commonplace to hear of teacher educators promoting reflective practice. The feasibility of the ways of reflective practice suggested in the recent literature will be reviewed. This paper arises from the conceptualization of reflection and a review of the concrete problems facing Hong Kong practitioners. In revisiting reflective practice as it is limited and constrained by the heavy workload of English teachers in Hong Kong, it seems to be of utmost importance to provide feasible ways for these teachers to develop their professional competence in this area. The difficulties and the problems that constrain Hong Kong teachers’ reflective practice shall be highlighted and it is argued that what in-service teachers require is a viable and effective way of being reflective. I shall suggest "Chatin-private" (Ouyang, 1997) as an alternative for the overworked teachers to remain reflective in the case of Hong Kong with a particular emphasis on workload of secondary school teachers.

Writing Proficiency in Preservice EFL Teachers:A Discourse-Analytic Study in the Chinese Mainland

The study investigates writing proficiency in preservice English as a Foreign Language(EFL)teachers characterized by selected discourse features inherent in their writing performance.Eighty-one preservice EFL teachers from a key normal university in the Chinese mainland participated in the study.The discourse-analytic approach was adopted to provide evidence underlying teachers’writing performance.The results suggest that 11 out of 19 features selected are informative of preservice EFL teachers’writing performance in that they can successfully differentiate EFL teachers at various levels of proficiency.These findings have implications for the professional preparation and development of preservice EFL teachers and provide insight into the development of language assessment for this population.

English as Foreign Language(EFL)Teachers’Efficacy and Positive Achievement Emotions:Relations to Instructional Changes After Attending a Study Abroad Program

Due to government policy,the number of study abroad professional de­velopment program for EFL teachers increased greatly in China during recent years.Study abroad program aims to help EFL teachers improve their knowledge and teaching practices,which requires them to make ad­justments to their traditional teaching styles accordingly.Hence,teachers may experience strong emotional reactions when they are faced with dif­ferent modes of teaching methods.From the perspective of“emotion”,this study used control-value theory of achievement emotions as the theoretical framework to examine the relationship between teacher efficacy,positive achievement emotions,and instructional changes among 386 Chinese EFL teachers who attended study abroad programs.Purposive sampling was used in data collection.Data analysis was conducted using Structural Equa­tion Model(SEM).The results showed that teacher efficacy correlated pos­itively with positive achievement emotions(enjoyment,hope,and pride)and instructional changes.Positive achievement emotions mediated the relationship between teacher efficacy and instructional changes.Findings showed the impact of teacher efficacy and positive achievement emotions on changes in teachers’thinking and instructional practices.Based on the findings and limitations of this study,implications on teacher education and professional development program,directions and suggestions for future studies are discussed.

Investigating L2 Request Strategies: A Case Study of Chinese English teachers' L2 Pragmatic Competence

Empirical descriptions of how the teacher performs requests in English can make them realize the importance of improving pragmatic competence, so that they could help students develop more native-like pragmatic behaviors and enhance cultural competence. This case study is to explore the pragmatic competence of a Chinese EFL teacher by investigating the patterns of realization strategies and the ways of reacting to the different social and contextual variables in her requests. It was found out that the teacher investigated in the study had good pragmatic awareness and pragmatic competence to produce the speech act of requests and develop students' pragmatic competence, but more explicit instructions should be provided to help students develop more native-like speech acts by providing more explicit instructions.

An Overview of Autonomous Learning and Reflections on EFL Teaching

This paper mainly focuses on the development of autonomous learning worldwide and its reflections on English teachingin China.Autonomous learning,which is beneficial to one’s lifelong journey,is the ability to take responsibility for one’s learning.The final goal of education is to cultivate students with autonomous learning skills.As for EFL teachers,three steps are as followed.Firstly,EFL teachers need to be trained to learn autonomously.Secondly,EFL teachers should construct some online autonomouslearning platforms.Thirdly,EFL teachers need to motivate learners to listen and watch more about English to arouse students’ in-terests in the target language.

“We Are Left in Limbo!”:Chinese EFL Student Teachers’Teaching Practicum Experience

Tensions between vision and reality in the teaching practicum is a significant issue in research and practice globally,but scanty attention has been awarded to research into areas of tension in teaching practice itself.This paper reports on a study that examines a cohort of Chinese English as a Foreign Language(EFL)student teachers’perceptions of the tensions arising in their teaching practicum in secondary schools.Triangulated research methods were employed for data collection.Reflective papers were employed as the main instrument of data collection,with classroom observation and field-notes used as supplementary sources of evidence for the occurrence of various unexpected difficulties.The overriding cause of this situation appeared to be the foundationalism paradigm that the teacher education program followed.The study highlights the need for teacher education programs to deal with emergent issues by way of critical postmodernist ideologies and make concerted efforts with schools to help student teachers continually adjust their visions in their practice.